“But when you get right down to it, when citizens take a long hard look in the ballot box at actually voting against your neighbours, against someone who’s different from you — in pluralistic societies like we have it becomes very difficult to sustain the hatred or the fear of the shopkeeper down the street or your colleague two cubicles over,” said Trudeau.

The interview aired on BBC’s flagship nightly current affairs show on the day the British government brought down its fall economic update, guaranteeing a large and influential audience.

Using an international audience to score domestic political points is routinely denounced by federal politicians of all stripes. The Conservatives often accused their critics of “trash talking” Canada while abroad, although Harper wasn’t afraid to dish up some sharp partisan commentary of his own when overseas.

At a G8 summit in Italy in 2009, Harper apologized after using the closing news conference to rip then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff for a quote that actually came from someone else.

Trudeau left London for a Commonwealth summit in Malta on Thursday after having an audience with Queen Elizabeth and a sit-down with British Prime Minister David Cameron the previous day.

His week-long international trip wraps up at the UN COP21 climate conference Monday in Paris.

“Have you been in and out of work since leaving school? Are you sick of living off your parents? Are you losing out on jobs because you’ve got no experience?”

This is the casting pitch for a new BBC reality show, Britain’s Hardest Grafter, currently looking across the country for stars. Although the program is still only in development, it is causing controversy on this wet, windswept and ferociously class-obsessed island. Produced by the company Twenty Twenty and BBC2, it has been dubbed the “working-class Hunger Games” by a mostly indignant British media and, last week, attracted more than 22,000 signatures to a Change.org petition demanding the broadcaster cancel the show before it’s aired.

The reality show, which sounds more like The Apprentice for the working poor, will pit a group of 25 low-paid workers and welfare recipients to compete in a series of employment tasks to determine who is the hardest worker, with the winner earning a cash prize of $29,500. This number is something of a theme in the show, since only those earning less than $29,500 per year may apply.

So why all the moral uproar about a show about out-of-work people trying to prove their employability on national television in exchange for payment and, possibly, a cash prize? Like most things in Britain, it’s about cultural context—both recent and historical.

From feudal times right through to the industrial revolution, Britain was a nation that depended on a vast, toiling underclass to hold up a cushy standard of living for the lucky aristocratic minority. As a sort of romantic recompense, poets and painters, from Christopher Marlowe to John Constable, mythologized and idealized the bucolic-but-impoverished peasant life. Since the rise of the middle class, this has changed (see the novels of Charles Dickens for a revised vision of the urban working class), but well-off British people’s appetite for gawking at their poorer counterparts has remained more or less constant. One need only look to the enduring success of soap operas like Coronation Street and EastEnders (both of which chronicle the lives of mostly miserable but endlessly plucky working class) to understand this appetite.

Britain’s Hardest Grafter comes hot on the heels of last year’s highly successful Channel 4 Series Benefits Street, which depicted the real lives of a community of people living on a street in Birmingham, where 90 per cent of the residents claimed welfare. A fly-on-the-wall documentary (rather than a reality competition show), it contained scenes of benefits recipients shoplifting, partying and generally behaving badly. The ensuing controversy over whether the subjects were exploited, and whether the program should have been made at all, sparked a national debate and resulted in high national ratings. Residents of the street complained they were misled by producers as to the nature of the show and were subjected to merciless media scrutiny. Some reported receiving death threats on Twitter. After an ensuing investigation by the media regulator Ofcom, the makers of Benefits Street were found to have acted ethically, but the show’s legacy—that no publicity is bad publicity, when it comes to televising the lives of the poor—lingers on.

Britain’s Hardest Grafter has been called “poverty porn” by liberal commentators who see it as patronizing and exploitative. The food blogger and Guardian columnist Jack Munroe (author of the famous blog AGirlCalledJack.com, in which she, a single mom on benefits, recounts her efforts to shop, cook for and feed her daughter) last week posted a list of cautions for anyone thinking of applying to be a contestant on the show. These included a reminder that any cash prize would be taxed as earnings, as well as a warning to remove from social media “any pictures of you with a beer in your hand, and DEFINITELY any champagne bottles or glasses.” At the other end of the spectrum, Telegraph columnist Rupert Myers scoffed at the notion that Britain’s working poor need protection from reality-TV producers, pointing out that a show about people doing menial labour is hardly a new low for the medium.

The BBC, for its part, has said it will not bow to pressure to cancel the show. In a joint statement with the producers, it described the program as “a serious social experiment,” which will “investigate just how hard people in the low-wage economy work.” What they did not add, of course, is the hope that middle-class Britain will happily sit back in the comfort of their living rooms and watch.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/in-britain-poverty-becomes-primetime-tv/feed/8Top Gear’s big, boorish, golden goosehttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/top-gear-big-boorish-golden-goose/
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/top-gear-big-boorish-golden-goose/#commentsThu, 19 Mar 2015 15:26:18 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=694639A spat between TV hosts that came to blows should be resolved with cash and an apology, or the BBC's Top Gear could disappear

Don’t worry too much about the fate of the BBC television program Top Gear: it is all in the hands of Ronald Coase. Coase (1910-2013, and no, that’s not a typo) was the economist who stumbled onto an elegant “theorem” that bargaining over an economic externality will lead to an efficient outcome, no matter who is originally assigned the thing, if there are no transaction costs.

Put in plainer English: If someone finds a goose that lays golden eggs, it probably won’t get cooked. The party that can get the most eggs from the goose has an incentive to outbid everyone else for it, including the random finder. The Coase theorem involves several assumptions—one of them being the existence of a marketplace in which everybody has pretty decent information about the goose. But that assumption would seem to apply to Top Gear, a most prolific bird. Supposedly, the franchise and its licensed knockoffs bring in some $283 million a year.

Interest disclosure: journalists tend to like Top Gear because two of its three hosts, Jeremy Clarkson and James May, came from print newspapers. They’re not especially handsome or even well-groomed, but at fairly advanced ages they somehow turned sarcasm and mischievousness into a planet-blanketing business empire.

Clarkson got into trouble on the evening of March 10 when he returned late from a day’s shooting to a hotel in the Dales of Yorkshire. The big fellow was keen on a hot meal, but the hotel’s chef had been unwisely permitted to abscond, and Clarkson settled his wrath upon longtime producer Oisin Tymon. Witnesses describe Tymon as receiving a spectacular barrage of verbal abuse. One newspaper is reporting that Clarkson punched his colleague, and there are other reports that Tymon was called a “lazy Irish [word we can’t print].” The BBC suspended Clarkson, cancelled the three episodes remaining in the season and arranged an internal hearing.

The problem is fascinating partly because the BBC has issues familiar to us from our own CBC: It is publicly owned and (through a licence fee) more or less publicly funded. That makes its troubles public business. Clarkson has accumulated a long rap sheet of xenophobic jibes and impolitic comments; part of the show’s appeal, perhaps even in foreign countries, is an ironic rude-uncle English chauvinism that has also created a legion of liberal haters. Note, however, that Clarkson and his pals spend as much airtime making fun of bad British cars as they do cracking wise about the Germans and the French.

By Clarkson’s own admission, he is already high on the brown list of the BBC’s human resources apparatus. Striking a co-worker is pretty nearly unforgivable. And he does seem chastened. In a Sun column that appeared after the incident, he wrote about dinosaurs being a “mistake” of nature that were “too big, too violent” to live: “No one,” he scribbled sadly, “mourns their passing.”

That hasn’t stopped some fans of the show from suspecting a grand conspiracy to destroy the glaringly white and male Clarkson. If there is such a conspiracy, he has certainly helped it along. Perhaps he is ashamed mostly of his dumber defenders: is punching people an actual privilege to be asserted by white male TV geniuses?

But punching somebody in the face does have one great virtue, as life mistakes go: it is all essentially between you and the punchee. Top Gear almost certainly brings enough money to the BBC to cover the hurt feelings, and even, within limits, the physical suffering of a grown man. Be honest—isn’t there a sum of money you would take in exchange for being hit once and never speaking of it again? From a standpoint of justice, if not honour, it would seem better for everybody for Tymon to get oodles of cash than for Top Gear to disappear while he contents himself with an official corporate declaration that, yes, the guy who thumped him was in the wrong.

If it is not possible for the BBC to finesse the problem thus, there is always Sky Broadcasting. The contracts of Clarkson and his co-hosts, James May and Richard Hammond, run out in April. The format of the show is mostly Clarkson’s invention, and there is no guarantee that the laddish Clarkson-May-Hammond triple act, which helped propel a dry consumer-affairs program into a world franchise, could survive the transplantation of a member.

As a business proposition, the trio are obviously more than the sum of their parts. So they will probably stick together. Wherever they end up. If Coase was right. And the assumptions bear up.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/top-gear-big-boorish-golden-goose/feed/4Britain’s massive smash TV hit is…a baking show?http://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/britains-massive-smash-tv-hit-is-a-baking-show/
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/britains-massive-smash-tv-hit-is-a-baking-show/#commentsFri, 22 Aug 2014 16:10:44 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=593593How a reality show all about baking—instead of bickering or backstory—became a proxy for an uncertain United Kingdom

‘The Great British Bake Off’ is drama-free and simple—but it’s proven to be extremely successful, launching hosts Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry into celebrity.

The British have always had a sweet tooth, but this summer the nation is on a sugar high. This month saw the season premiere of The Great British Bake Off, a hit reality show now in its fifth season on BBC. The program—which features a typical reality format of 12 contestants, two judges (one posh but kind, one middle-class and sharp), a lot of swelling music, to-camera interviews and a pair of goofy hosts—has proved not only a mainstay but a bona ﬁde cultural phenomenon.

With the show’s recent move from BBC Two to the nation’s main network, BBC One, ratings soared to nearly eight million. So a huge swath of the population actually sat down to watch a bunch of very regular-looking folks—builders, pensioners and even a spotty high school student—attempt to make their best Swiss rolls and chocolate cherry cakes. No singing, no dancing, no screaming studio audience or glitter-dusted pyrotechnics, just a simple white tent, a dozen gas ovens and a boatload of icing sugar. There is no cash prize to compete for, just the unofficial title of Britain’s greatest amateur baker.

So why is it such a big deal?

Stuart Murphy, director of Sky TV’s Entertainment channels, says the show has an alchemy he’s rarely seen in his career as a broadcaster. “It sounds a bit mad to say this about a show about cakes, but I think it’s essentially about values. Britain today isn’t sure what it stands for. Politically, we don’t know where we are; everyone is disengaged. Bake Off reflects a version of Britishness everyone can agree on.”

Sky (which is owned by Rupert Murdoch) recently acquired Love Productions, the independent production company that created and produced the show for the BBC. The landmark deal, rumoured to be in the tens of millions of dollars, shows what a lucrative property The Great British Bake Off has become—and how deeply it resonates. So far, the show’s format has been successfully exported to 14 other countries, including the U.S., Australia and France, and more foreign sales are likely to follow.

“Basically, it gives a simple, digestible version of Britishness,” says Murphy. “It’s a bit dated and nostalgic—bunting and stately homes and buttered scones—but it’s also about family and community and villages and regular people who are triers and enthusiasts. The show takes something seemingly trivial and shows how if people become really obsessed, something beautiful can result.”

One thing that sets Bake Off apart from most other hit talent shows, be they about cooking, singing or hysterical wannabe models, is its buttoned-down restraint and common decency. While the show has produced its fair share of stars—the judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood are now massive celebrities and bestselling cookbook authors, while previous winners have gone on to write cookbooks and make appearances on chat shows—it is not strictly personality-driven. There is much more discussion of soggy bottoms and batter than of the contestants’ back stories, and all the contestants are genuinely nice to each other. There are no opportunities for sabotage, and emotional melodrama is kept to a minimum. “The interesting thing about it is that it’s really just about the cakes,” says Phil Hogan, TV critic for the U.K.’s Observer newspaper (its sister paper The Guardian, like most of the major dailies, live-blogged the opening episode). “It’s got rid of lots of the synthetic emotional tactics and humiliation and noise that people were sick of with cooking reality shows. And it makes sense, because there’s just something inherently genteel about baking. For one thing, it’s not a performance. But there’s suspense because you don’t know if it’s going to work out until you take it out of the oven.”

And, of course, there is the inherent appeal of baked goods—cakes, pies, biscuits and other sweets—that resonates so deeply with Brits from all walks of life. Britain is a nation of cross-class cake-eaters, as any trip to your local Tesco pastry aisle or Fortnum & Mason’s emporium of high-end sweets will reveal. One of this year’s most promising contestants, Richard, a builder from North London who impressed the judges with his spectacular Swiss roll, encapsulated the sort of sheepish modesty viewers have come to love about Bake Off contestants. “Mary is very posh and, against that general upper-middle-class background, you’ve got these regular folk trying to show that they can do better than people slightly up the class chain,” Murphy explains. “So in that sense, it transcends class. Unlike singing or dancing, baking is within touching distance. We can all bake a nice cake if we put our mind to it.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/britains-massive-smash-tv-hit-is-a-baking-show/feed/3UK spending watchdog to investigate severance payouts at BBChttp://www.macleans.ca/general/uk-spending-watchdog-to-investigate-severance-payouts-at-bbc/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/uk-spending-watchdog-to-investigate-severance-payouts-at-bbc/#respondWed, 26 Dec 2012 21:57:10 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=331728LONDON – Britain’s public spending watchdog says it will investigate severance packages at the BBC in the wake of a highly-criticized payout to the broadcaster’s former director general.
The probe…

]]>LONDON – Britain’s public spending watchdog says it will investigate severance packages at the BBC in the wake of a highly-criticized payout to the broadcaster’s former director general.

The probe comes after a group of British lawmakers accused the BBC of being cavalier with taxpayers’ money by paying 450,000 pounds ($730,000) in severance to George Entwistle — double the amount he was entitled to — when he quit last month over the BBC’s disastrous handling of fallout from the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal.

Barry Lester, a spokesman for the National Audit Office, said Wednesday the watchdog had written to the BBC saying it wanted to look at Entwistle’s payout and that the broadcaster had responded by asking the NAO to undertake a wider study in 2013 on its severance packages.

As the BBC hyperventilates over grave mistakes in its news coverage, an earlier media scandal prepares to sting anew. The government-ordered Leveson inquiry, prompted by charges of criminal mischief at British tabloids, is expected to issue recommendations this month—perhaps calling for legal curbs on press freedom, a prospect of distress to journos and delight to their targets.

The British press—often dubbed “raucous,” apparently as a compliment—has a tradition of wit and wilfulness, from Samuel Johnson to George Orwell to Christopher Hitchens. Publications investigate boldly, comment amusingly. But there’s oodles of rubbish too, some obtained by dubious means that have included impersonating a sheik and, it is alleged, illegally accessing the voicemail of crime victims and celebrities.

The actor Hugh Grant, enraged by intrusive tabloid reporting, has become a prominent advocate of press regulation. “We’re not the wicked Goliath of the establishment taking on the plucky David of the press,” he wrote recently in The Spectator. “It’s the other way round. They are the establishment. They have effectively run the country for the past 40 years. They are Goliath. We need help.”

Those who oppose regulation insist that only a fraction of the British press engaged in malign practices. And those sinners broke the law—just apply it, they say, and all should be well. The great fear is “statutory regulation,” meaning legislation that, in the worst scenario, could lead to state influence over news coverage.

The muddle-haired mayor of London, Boris Johnson, a conservative journalist before becoming a Conservative politician, wants no such infringements and he extols free speech, even for hateful publications. “To rinse the gutters of public life,” he says, “you need a gutter press.”

As with many aphorisms, the more one looks at it, the less there is to see. High-minded justifications for the gutter press do exist, but cleanliness isn’t among them. The tabloids have not rinsed gutters so much as clogged them, emitting a chunder of trashertainment and an assembly line of straw celebrities, who are propped up, then spat on.

The debate breaks roughly along political lines, with the Labour Party more favourable to press regulation and many Conservatives opposed. Not coincidentally, the most powerful newspapers in Britain are right-leaning, including the two bestselling dailies, theSun (circulation: 2.4 million) and the Daily Mail (1.9 million), along with the most-read broadsheet, theDaily Telegraph(560,000). The liberals’ broadsheet of record, theGuardian, sells a meagre 205,000 copies a day.

Prime Minister David Cameron, leading an unpopular and fractious coalition government, is awkwardly positioned: he faces pressure from fellow Tories not to legislate the news media, as well as pressure from the public to act, not least because it was he who last year ordered the costly Leveson inquiry, partly to defuse criticism over his ties to journalists accused in the scandal.

While the printed press prepared for bad news from Lord Justice Leveson, a second media scandal exploded, besmirching the most-reputed newsgathering organization in the country, the BBC, which is funded by the public, regulated by the government, and aspires to earnest impartiality. The cause of the scandal couldn’t have been less earnest: a TV presenter known for his peroxide pageboy haircut, wink-nudge humour and extensive charity work that, the police now believe, concealed serial pedophilia; his alleged victims number in the hundreds.

Not only did the BBC put Jimmy Savile on the air for decades, but after his death last year it quashed a television investigation into the sex-abuse accusations for reasons that remain murky. This October, a rival channel, ITV, broadcast its own exposé on Savile, after which came a flood of abuse allegations. Why had the BBC failed to act? Was someone protecting its long-time star?

The broadcaster ordered its own inquiries, but this failed to quell the outrage. Then, as if to compensate for its misplaced restraint in the Savile case, the same BBC news program broadcast sex-abuse allegations against a former top Tory politician—claims that proved utterly false. As a result, the head of the BBC resigned on Saturday, and other top news officials have stepped aside during internal investigations.

Bungling at the Beeb provides ammunition for those on the right who have long deplored the public broadcaster, accusing it of wasting taxpayers’ money and harbouring a leftist bias. Cameron himself once implied distaste for the organization when discussing budget cuts in Britain: “We are all in it together,” he remarked, “including, deliciously, the BBC.”

The BBC scandal is unrelated to phone-hacking, yet it circles back to the printed press in an unexpected way. A freelance journalist who researched the Savile case months ago says that seven national newspapers declined to buy his story because, he believes, the Leveson inquiry had made them fearful of targeting public figures. Maybe so. But rumours about Savile’s behaviour had circulated for years, and newspapers were hardly shrinking violets back then. Why didn’t they expose Savile long ago?

One explanation is British libel law, which is so strict as to inhibit coverage. Litigious celebrities often choose to file legal complaints in London, also known as “a town named sue.” “The tabloids made me and, if they want, they’ll break me,” Savile said in a 1993 television interview. “Except I won’t go down without a fight. I’ll take everyone down with me.” A year later, one such tabloid, the Sunday Mirror, looked into reports that Savile had sexually assaulted girls at a reform school. But its sources feared confronting a rich celebrity’s lawyers in court; the story was dropped. In 2008, Savile launched proceedings against the Sun over another story linking him to a child-abuse scandal.

One of the producers at the BBC program Newsnight, whose investigation into Savile was shelved last year, says legal concerns delayed him from even proposing the piece. “The victims, as far as we could tell, would be very vulnerable—people who would not stand up in a libel court,” Meirion Jones said. “So it was only when he died that it really became feasible.”

Perhaps the problem isn’t too little regulation, but too much. The system already includes a Press Complaints Commission, which failed to deal with the phone-hacking scandal, and is widely viewed as a flop. The Guardian is advocating an arbitration panel, to be established under law but to operate independently of government. Such a panel might provide a less onerous way to resolve libel claims.

Still, the only guarantee of honourable journalism is a culture of ethics. When competition intensifies, when rewards and dangers increase, journalists face temptation to tweak facts and manipulate sources—unless such actions are absolutely shunned. The ethical code must also include an aspiration to objectivity, so lacking in the most heinous British newspapers and the worst American cable-news shows. Without this, a downward spiral ensues of pandering, politicization, rabble-rousing.

News organizations that demand ethical rigour appear sanctimonious to some in the rough-and-tumble British print media—particularly when the moralists blunder, as a publication like, say, theNew York Timessometimes has. But upon doing so, it has sought to remedy its errors, and trumpets them publicly. The Beeb is attempting this now: it has apologized, initiated inquiries, called for a structural overhaul, seen the resignation or removal of top figures, and it broadcast an aggressive hour-long investigation into its own failings called Jimmy Savile—What the BBC Knew.

Serious news organizations prize credibility. They are not merely businesses, earning by churning. They acknowledge a civic role, and are willing to pay for it. Sadly, fewer consumers are, accustomed as they’ve become to free information online; they risk getting what they pay for. The farcical background to all this talk of principles is that the print media in Britain are in irreversible decline, with circulations plummeting and losses in the millions of pounds every month. British news will look very different in the future than it does today. If lawmakers take action, they may be regulating the past.

Journalists used to boast that theirs is not a profession with a licensing body, but a trade open to anyone with a pen and a willingness to ask questions. That was never entirely true—to be heard, one had to join the established news media. Nowadays, the old claim has validity: anyone can publish, and nearly everyone is.

Disconcertingly, the style of news that proliferates in the digital age—lowbrow subjects, the frantic competition for attention, the uncertain rules—most closely mirrors that of the tabloids. Can there be a culture of journalistic ethics online? Who would instill it and how? Or will the meaning of “news” keep getting looser, with inquiries to patch up society in the aftermath?

Sherlock Holmes used to be a dour Victorian, and now he’s the detective who’s bringing sexy back. Or at least that’s the impression you’d get from the latest television trend: modern-day versions of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective. Robert Downey Jr. was a younger-than-usual Holmes in the 2009 film version, but in recent TV adaptations Holmes is much cooler. People are watching Sherlock, the hit BBC drama starring 36-year-old Benedict Cumberbatch as a contemporary, computer-using Holmes, or they’re tuning in to Global to see Elementary, in which Holmes lives in New York and Watson is a female doctor. “I think the character of Sherlock Holmes is innately attractive,” says Naomi Roper, who runs a fan site for Cumberbatch. He’s even more attractive now that he’s been converted into a contemporary TV hero.

The traditional portrayal of Holmes is as a haughty intellectual with a bumbling sidekick. Aidan Quinn, who plays a key role on Elementary as a policeman who turns to Sherlock for help, says he “just knew Holmes from the Basil Rathbone movies,” in which the character was middle-aged and distant. The new Holmes shows have gone in another direction. Cumberbatch has become an international heartthrob, with fans dubbing themselves “Cumberbitches.” And in Elementary, Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes is an anti-authoritarian rebel, particularly when it comes to wisecracks: Quinn says most of the humour is between Holmes and Watson, with Holmes exposing other characters as square and humourless.

How did Holmes go from old-school detective to modern-day super-nerd? It might help that his anti-social tendencies—Cumberbatch’s character describes himself as “a high-functioning sociopath”—are more popular today than they’ve ever been. Alexandra Sokoloff, author of the novel The Harrowing and a big fan of Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, points out that eccentric intellectuals are now respected. “In an age dominated by minds like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs, the nerd is the new alpha male.” Holmes uses smarts rather than physical strength to fight his battles. “He’s going to show up the police,” Quinn notes. “He’s outwitting people who are bigger and stronger.”

Making a modern-day version of Holmes has an additional benefit for TV producers: instant publicity. Fans of Doyle’s original stories are fanatical and protective. When Quinn got the Elementary part, he discovered several friends were “rabid aficionados” who “sent me emails and texts about how much they thought they were going to hate the show, but they’re all loving it.” That kind of fan interest created tremendous buzz, negative and positive, around the premiere of Sherlock. And when Elementary came out, Sherlock fans accused it of imitating the BBC’s version, although Quinn says the rivalry only existed in the media. “I know that Benedict Cumberbatch gave Jonny his blessing and said, ‘Go for it.’ ” Networks would never get that kind of controversy by creating a young, sexy contemporary detective; by naming him Sherlock Holmes, their shows can be part of a well-known brand that isn’t under copyright.

Doing a modern Holmes show also may allow creators an excuse to move away from the graphic grittiness that has been a feature of most recent detective shows ever since CSI amped up the level of TV gore. On Elementary and Sherlock, they can indulge in a more old-fashioned type of detective story. “We live slightly in the realm of fantasy,” Quinn explains. “It’s more internal, it’s more cerebral, it’s more about the relationship of Watson and Holmes. We don’t want the blood and guts.” These shows are reviving Doyle’s gentlemanly style of mystery storytelling.

All that could mean the new idea of Holmes—a sexy nerd with no Victorian hang-ups who doesn’t necessarily live in England—could become the definitive version for millennials. After working on a modern Holmes show for only a few weeks, Quinn says the new take on the character is displacing the old one. “I see Sherlock Holmes more as Jonny Lee Miller now than anyone else. But,” he adds, “I still have Basil Rathbone in the back of my brain.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/culture/television/a-holmes-for-our-times/feed/7BBC trust head: Radical overhaul after broadcaster’s chief resigns over sex-abuse coveragehttp://www.macleans.ca/general/bbc-trust-head-radical-overhaul-after-broadcasters-chief-resigns-over-sex-abuse-coverage/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/bbc-trust-head-radical-overhaul-after-broadcasters-chief-resigns-over-sex-abuse-coverage/#respondSun, 11 Nov 2012 12:29:27 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=313683LONDON - The head of the BBC's governing body said Sunday the broadcaster needs a radical overhaul following the resignation of its chief executive in wake of a scandal over a botched report on child sex-abuse allegations.

]]>LONDON – The head of the BBC’s governing body said Sunday the broadcaster needs a radical overhaul following the resignation of its chief executive in wake of a scandal over a botched report on child sex-abuse allegations.

Chris Patten vowed to restore confidence and trust in the BBC, which is reeling from the resignation of George Entwistle and the scandals prompting his ouster.

Entwistle resigned Saturday night amid a storm of controversy after a news program wrongly implicated a British politician in a child sex-abuse scandal, deepening a crisis sparked by revelations it decided not to air similar allegations against one of its own stars.

Patten told the BBC on Sunday he will not resign, saying he must ensure the publicly-funded broadcaster “has a grip” and gets back on track.

“My job is to make sure that … we restore confidence and trust in the BBC,” he said, and called for a “thorough, radical structural overhaul.”

The scandal comes at a sensitive time for Britain’s media establishment, struggling to recover from an ongoing phone-hacking scandal which brought down the nation’s bestselling Sunday newspaper, led to the arrests of dozens of journalists and prompted a judge-led inquiry into journalistic ethics and the ties between politics and the news media.

Kevin Marsh, a former senior editor of the BBC, said the resignation does little to re-establish public trust in the BBC, which is funded mainly by a tax on U.K. households that have televisions.

“The BBC asks the British public to pay its bills every year, and the only way it can do that is if the British public trusts the way it is spending its money,” he said.

Entwistle took over as head of the BBC two months ago from Mark Thompson, who will become chief executive of The New York Times Co. this month. The broadcaster was emerging from a difficult period marked by budget cuts, job losses and mounting calls to justify its 3.5 billion pound ($5.6 billion) budget.

___

Associated Press writer Cassandra Vinograd can be reached at http://twitter.com/CassVinograd

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/bbc-trust-head-radical-overhaul-after-broadcasters-chief-resigns-over-sex-abuse-coverage/feed/0BBC chief resigns after network wrongly implicated politician in sex abuse scandalhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/bbc-chief-resigns-after-network-wrongly-implicated-politician-in-sex-abuse-scandal/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/bbc-chief-resigns-after-network-wrongly-implicated-politician-in-sex-abuse-scandal/#commentsSat, 10 Nov 2012 22:27:19 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=313667LONDON - George Entwistle, the director general of the BBC, has resigned over a TV program it aired that wrongly implicated a British politician in a child sex-abuse scandal.

]]>LONDON – George Entwistle, the director general of the BBC, has resigned over a TV program it aired that wrongly implicated a British politician in a child sex-abuse scandal.

In a brief statement outside BBC headquarters in London, Entwistle said Saturday night that he has decided to do the “honourable thing” and step down.

“When appointed to the role, with 23 years’ experience as a producer and leader at the BBC, I was confident the trustees had chosen the best candidate for the post, and the right person to tackle the challenges and opportunities ahead,” he said.

“However, the wholly exceptional events of the past few weeks have led me to conclude that the BBC should appoint a new leader.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/bbc-chief-resigns-after-network-wrongly-implicated-politician-in-sex-abuse-scandal/feed/1National Unity Watchhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/national-unity-watch/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/national-unity-watch/#commentsTue, 24 Apr 2012 12:30:37 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=254421Denis Coderre said yesterday that a Wild Rose win in Alberta might have an impact on national unity.“We have to be very, very careful to have a Wildrose government …

]]>Denis Coderre said yesterday that a Wild Rose win in Alberta might have an impact on national unity.

“We have to be very, very careful to have a Wildrose government because when the leader’s saying, ‘well, Quebec is complaining all the time, we shouldn’t give them (equalization), they have to understand where the money’s coming from …’ Hello? What’s that?” said Coderre. “Everybody at one moment of their history was there to help each other. So I think we have to remember what Canadians stand for.”

Meanwhile, Michael Ignatieff sat down with the BBC to talk about Scotland and ended up musing about the potential eventuality of independence for Quebec.

Both men seem to forget that in defeating the Liberals in 2008 and electing a majority Conservative government last year, Canadians have already assured this nation’s unity.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/national-unity-watch/feed/33London’s long, hot summerhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/world/londons-long-hot-summer/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/londons-long-hot-summer/#commentsSun, 14 Aug 2011 22:30:05 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=208711What role did social media play in the violence?

What began as a peaceful public vigil outside a north London police station last Saturday rapidly morphed into several days of rampaging protests—a frightening flashpoint in a season of increasing unrest in the British capital. By midday Monday, more than 200 protesters had been arrested in skirmishes that left scores of officers injured and several down-at-heel neighbourhoods severely damaged by fire and theft. And there was no end in sight. By Monday evening, riot police were busy in Oxford Circus, and BBC commentators were advising Londoners to stay indoors—meanwhile, violence had erupted in Birmingham, Liverpool and other large cities.

How did it all start? The initial protest in Tottenham, a socio-economically depressed and ethnically mixed district in the city’s north end, was organized in response to the shooting earlier last week of Mark Duggan. The local man lived in a nearby housing project and was, depending on which sources you believe, either a peace-loving family man or an active gang member. There are reports that he was carrying a weapon, allegedly a starter’s pistol converted to fire live ammunition; Duggan’s death came after a minicab he was in was stopped during a pre-planned police operation.

What’s inarguable is that police were involved in the shooting, though it’s still not known who actually killed Duggan. Why the protest turned violent is similarly murky: at least one witness claimed it all began when a 16-year-old girl was viciously attacked after throwing a champagne bottle at officers, yet others blamed unsubstantiated rumours circulated on Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger claiming that Duggan was murdered in an unprovoked, execution-style shooting.

During the initial flare-up in Tottenham on Saturday night, mobs of balaclava-clad young people tore through the streets after dark, setting fire to homes and businesses, and kicking in windows and looting shops, while a woefully unprepared police force looked on helplessly—and, according to some critics, passively allowed parts of the neighbourhood to burn.

The following night, crowds of enraged youths clashed with riot police in neighbourhoods all over the city. Police have downplayed this second wave of outbursts—“copycat violence”—but claim the existence of a scheme organized by criminal elements who intentionally used social media to incite mob rule.

Whatever the case, it’s clear the initial public grievance over Duggan death quickly evolved into something far more pernicious and opportunistic. Duggan’s relatives, though frustrated by police handling of the case, told the media they do not condone the riots and called for an end to the violence.

The police have been criticized both for reacting too aggressively and for not doing enough to stop the initial riot. But others, like Kit Malthouse, deputy mayor of London and chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, lambasted rioters themselves. They are, he said, merely “looking for the opportunity to steal and set fire to buildings and create a sense of mayhem, whether they’re anarchists or part of organized gangs or just feral youth, frankly, who fancy a new pair of trainers.” And indeed, there were widespread reports of youths gleefully hauling shopping carts full of stolen booty away from retailers like Foot Locker. Looters also, reportedly, fried up their own burgers and fries at a ransacked McDonald’s.

But some left-wing commentators, such as former mayor Ken Livingstone, framed unrest as a reaction to the Tory-led government’s recent cuts to social spending and likened the riots to those that plagued Britain when Margaret Thatcher imposed similar policies. But while it’s true that youth unemployment in many of the affected areas is high compared to the national average, the real root of the tension appears to be between residents of neighbourhoods like Tottenham—poor, crime-infested and with a large Afro-Caribbean population that claims to be the target of discrimination and abuse—and the police force, which is feeling the heat during this summer of scandals. (Just last month, the top two commanders were forced to resign amid accusations of misconduct in the phone-hacking scandal involving Rupert Murdoch’s former tabloid News of the World.)

On Monday night, while fire crews battled blazes across London, Prime Minister David Cameron returned from his Tuscan holiday, pledging to “do everything necessary to restore order to Britain’s streets” and announcing that Parliament would be recalled on Thursday. Reports were swirling that police were to be given permission to use plastic bullets and armoured vehicles.

As the melee continued, law-abiding citizens watched their homes and livelihoods go up in flames, in some cases quite literally. Many seem to feel, as one Tottenham bus driver put it, that unless something changes in the capital, “This will happen again. These kids don’t care. They don’t have to pay for this damage. Working people do. What do they have to lose?”

Nevertheless, on Tuesday, hundreds of Londoners gathered in Hackney, Clapham and other besieged neighbourhoods, armed, unlike the nighttime mobs, with brooms and garbage bags. Within hours they’d swept the streets and boarded up damaged shops. When Mayor Boris Johnson came to check out their efforts he was greeted by a chant: “Where’s your broom?”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/londons-long-hot-summer/feed/3‘This place is what Canada is all about’http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/this-place-is-what-canada-is-all-about/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/this-place-is-what-canada-is-all-about/#commentsThu, 14 Jul 2011 16:35:45 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=200825The ball hockey-playing prince wooed the crowd in four languages

What drew Yellowknife Mayor Gordon Van Tighem to the Northwest Territories 20 years ago, after years in Calgary and Toronto, are some of the same experiences Prince William and Catherine were able to sample during their 40-hour visit to the territorial capital and the wilderness beyond. “You’re on the edge of some of the little remaining, but accessible, wilderness in the world,” says the mayor. “Twenty minutes in any direction you won’t be finding any cigarette packages or Tim Hortons cups, and you can get lost.”

There was little risk of William and Catherine going astray during their whirlwind visit to what the BBC breathlessly described as “the remote settlement of Yellowknife.” The description amused rather than offended the mayor. With almost 20,000 people, representing 120 ethnic groups—and “two McDonald’s”—the mayor considers Yellowknife “a little-big city.” But he couldn’t have been more delighted with William’s glowing description of life above the 60th parallel. “This place is what Canada is all about,” the duke of Cambridge told a cheering crowd of about 3,000 at the civic plaza beside city hall, “vast, open beauty, tough, resilient, friendly peoples. True nature. True humanity.” Behind him were the glistening waters of Frame Lake. Beside him and Catherine on stage were territorial leader Floyd Roland and Aboriginal dancers and drummers. William earned an even bigger roar of approval when he closed his brief remarks by adding his thanks in the languages of the Dene and the north coast Inuvialuit. After opening with a few words of French, the duke looked pleased at acing what may have been his first-ever quadrilingual speech.

The couple, having travelled almost 3,700 km from Charlottetown through three time zones, was allowed a late start Tuesday, and looked the fresher for it. Yellowknife, this time of year, is murder for the sleep deprived. The sun pulls 20-hour days, and the city is bathed in twilight for the remainder of what passes for night. Once up, the couple had a full agenda, “the full meal deal,” as the mayor put it. After opening remarks at the plaza, they watched demonstrations of Dene hand games (a form of gambling) and Inuvialuit high kicks. They also were presented with red Canadian Olympic hockey jerseys with “Cambridge” written across the back. They watched a brief but spirited game of street hockey with a group of young people. William picked up a stick, but failed at three shoot-out attempts to get past goalie Calvin Lowmen, despite the duke’s joking plea that “You’ve got to let one in!”

Much of the trip focused on Aboriginals, who make up half the territorial population, and youth. In the circular legislature they met with members of a youth parliament; one topic the group raised was the challenge of keeping young people in school. Fewer than 16 per cent of Aboriginal students graduate from high school in the territory, and only 4.6 per cent have university degrees.

Later Tuesday, the couple took a 30-minute float plane journey to Blachford Lake, the very definition of remote. There, they were to meet with members of the Canadian Rangers, the country’s volunteer northern home guard. Both William and his brother Harry were named honorary members of the Rangers in 2009. They also had a hands-on tour at the lake of the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning, a program that combines traditional Aboriginal learning into a university-accredited program. On Wednesday, in a change of plans, the royals were to board a jet to meet with emergency personnel and residents in Slave Lake, Alta. The community was devastated in May after a wildfire destroyed 40 per cent of the town. Organizers had held off announcing the trip until they were certain the visit would not disrupt reconstruction efforts.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/this-place-is-what-canada-is-all-about/feed/1Cleaning up Britain’s privacy lawshttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/movies/cleaning-up-privacy-laws/
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/movies/cleaning-up-privacy-laws/#commentsTue, 17 May 2011 13:50:15 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=191349Should government or the courts draw the line between free speech and the right to privacy?

No one can whip up a scandal quite like the British press. In a country in which the kiss ’n’ tell splash is both a lucrative and time-honoured tradition, many publications here view it as their right—in some cases raison d’être—to be able to publish the raunchiest details of a celebrity’s sexual indiscretions with impunity.

But the British courts don’t always agree. For several years now, British judges have been granting anonymizing court orders, commonly known as “super-injunctions,” which prevent U.K. media outlets (usually tabloid newspapers) from publishing stories that may be damaging to the parties involved. In some cases, the orders prevent the claimants themselves from being named, and in the most “super” of super-injunctions (a slang—not legal—term), the injunction itself is also banned from public mention. The injunctions cost between $30,000 and $80,000 on average to take out, prompting widespread criticism that they are an option open to only the already rich and famous.

If there is only one thing the British press like less than being scooped, it’s being muzzled. While super-injunctions have long been an irritant to the scandal sheets, they have only lately boiled over into front-page news, after the Wikipedia entries of four protected public figures were rewritten with lurid details inserted. In response, a number of others jumped at the opportunity to speak out against these gag orders, which some see as both hopeless in the digital era, as well as a dangerous infringement on freedom of the press.

BBC TV political commentator Andrew Marr recently admitted he was “embarrassed” by a gag order he had taken out in 2008 to prevent the news of his own extramarital affair from emerging in the press. “I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists,” he told the DailyMail, adding that he would pursue the injunction no further.

Indeed, there would be little point, given how difficult it is to contain such details. This past weekend the Twittersphere was abuzz with the leaked names of celebrities who were alleged to have standing super-injunctions. These included a married Premiership footballer who was alleged to have had an affair with a former Big Brother star and glamour model, a famous actor who is accused of sleeping with a prostitute, a celebrity chef with legal problems, and a “show business figure” who had his celebrity mistress (and co-worker) fired after his wife learned of their affair.

The controversy has prompted calls in the House of Commons for the government to come up with clearer privacy laws—ones that are not left wide open to the interpretation of the judiciary. Even Prime Minister David Cameron waded into the debate last month, when he admitted at a public meeting he felt “a little uneasy” at the prospect of court orders determining the fine balance between free speech and private life. And another Conservative MP went further, decrying “the ability of judges to decide policy instead of elected parliamentarians,” raising, somewhat bizarrely, the rumour that even an unnamed elected official was seeking a super-injunction in order to prevent private activities being discussed in Parliament.

While the controversy continues, supporters of increased privacy laws argue the debate is being stoked by a media desperate for moral high ground in light of the ongoing phone-hacking scandal. That case, in which several prominent U.K. tabloids are accused of breaking into the voice mailboxes of a long list of celebrities from Jude Law to Prince Harry, rocked the nation’s highest office when Cameron’s communications chief Andy Coulson was forced to step down amid allegations he had known about the practice during his time as a tabloid editor. The first civil cases, including one involving actress Sienna Miller, are scheduled to begin later this month.

Entertainment lawyer Duncan Lamont, head of the media and entertainment law team at London’s Charles Russell law firm, says that the widespread media perception that super-injunctions are on the rise is actually false—only a handful have been granted this year. But they do tend to accumulate—he says there are currently about 50 outstanding—which builds resentment in the media. Lamont argues that, in an intrusive press culture like Britain’s, the usual legal process of claimants seeking damages against a publication after a kiss ’n’ tell story has been published simply doesn’t work. “By the time your case is heard you might have gotten divorced, had your children refuse to speak to you and been shunned by friends in the street.”

He points out the case of Formula One head Max Mosley, who in 2008 won a breach of privacy case against the News of the World tabloid, which reported he’d taken part in a Nazi-themed orgy with prostitutes. While Mosley admitted he had indeed privately paid for and taken part in group sex, the court ruled there were no Nazi overtones involved. He was awarded $95,000 in damages.

Since then, Mosley has embarked on a crusade to toughen up Britain’s privacy laws, seeking a ruling this week from the European Court of Human Rights that would require the media to alert an individual in advance of any report dealing with their private life. Should the court find in his favour, other celebrities might be spared the nuisance of becoming, as Lamont put it, “a worldwide figure of fun.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/culture/movies/cleaning-up-privacy-laws/feed/2A very pale shade of greenhttp://www.macleans.ca/authors/colby-cosh/a-very-pale-shade-of-green/
http://www.macleans.ca/authors/colby-cosh/a-very-pale-shade-of-green/#commentsThu, 10 Jun 2010 11:28:02 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=132025The BBC brings us a short article about carbon footprints by environmental author-consultant Mike Berners-Lee, who brings the rewarding news that “we can actually afford to chill out about certain…

I am always interested in lectures and tirades predicated on various kinds of environmental “footprint”. It seems to me that this concept and near-relatives like “food miles” are the modern analogue of the Marxian labour theory of value—the latest in a series of attempts to divorce the notion of “value” from brute considerations of exchange, and to anchor it metaphysically in some other quantity. In environmentalism, as in Marxism, this exercise appears to end by dividing the extremists and the hard men from the accommodators or “realists”, who don’t wish to frighten either the horses or the bourgeoisie and who are always ready to let some economic practicalities into the discussion through a back door.

Berners-Lee, who has a new book out, obviously belongs to the latter category. Witness item two on his top-ten list of things we don’t need to feel guilty about:

Using electric hand driers beats reusable towels because it avoids laundry and comes in at three to 20g CO2e per go. …The footprint pays its way by reducing the burden on health services—fewer germs usually mean less illness.

The footprint “pays its way” by reducing illness? Which medium are we using to make this “payment” again? This sounds suspiciously like concern for mere human welfare at the expense of the planet, comrades.

Roughly speaking, humans emit carbon because of certain things they like to do; in descending order of general environmental harmfulness, these would include 1) travel, 2) productive work, 3) leisure, and 4) respiration. It seems to me that a burden of infection imposed by the abolition of hand dryers would reduce (2) and might well prevent a certain measurable amount of (4). It is not as though Berners-Lee is unaware that we living mammals are all exhaling carbon even in the quietest moments—see his item number eight:

Getting cremated is likely to be less than a 10,000th of your life’s carbon footprint, at 80kg CO2e. On this one occasion you can treat yourself to whatever form of disposal you prefer, safe in the knowledge that you have already done the most carbon-friendly thing possible.

Having embraced economic opportunity costs when it comes to a little thing like hand dryers, Berners-Lee ignores them altogether when it comes to one of the few individual decisions in our lives, one with an indisputably pretty huge “footprint”, that cannot in fact make a damn bit of purely selfish difference to us or give us an experience of pleasure or convenience. This attitude is shocking to me if only for the offence it presents to my Presbyterian frugality genome. Yes, in dying, you and I will have done “the most carbon-friendly thing possible”. But we are all going to die one way or another; why should we consider, given the whole premise of “footprints”, that this gives us license to go about it in an environmentally destructive manner?

And what a curious mixture of politeness and harshness: yes, your death is altogether good for the planet, and you should be aware of this every hour between now and then, as you tot up the “costs” of every picnic, pie, and pencil; but by all means feel free to muck up the atmosphere once you’ve shoved off, carbon-blower.

Berners-Lee also veers into arbitrariness, I think, when he informs us that “adding milk at least doubles the footprint of a cup of tea,” but that “if this helps to make your life feel worth living, you can enjoy it without guilt.” The same thing could easily be said of a Ducati Monster 1100. Surely we should feel precisely as much guilt as the excess emissions, added up over a lifetime, warrant. Nobody needs hot tea at all, let alone to have it with milk. Nobody, that is, except the English. (Nobody but an Englishman would talk of tea as a spiritually indispensable bulwark against despair.)

A hundred years ago tea was a representation of imperialism, just as much as it might be, today, of capitalist wastefulness in the husbanding of BTUs. The Berners-Lees of that day would have said much the same thing that today’s model does now: “If that cuppa helps to make your life feel worth living, go ahead and enjoy it without bothering your head about tea plantations and Opium Wars.”

All this would be of purely idle interest, except to those of us who tend to see environmentalism as a scheme for sending everyone pre-emptively to purgatory and then, à la Berners-Lee, getting rich off the sale of indulgences. What strikes me is that as time goes by we can expect the earnest, radical environmentalists to direct ever greater quantities of their energy against namby-pamby greenwashers; I can’t help wondering whether a working knowledge of the history of the European left from 1928-39 will prove unexpectedly rewarding in the coming decades.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/authors/colby-cosh/a-very-pale-shade-of-green/feed/54‘The cultural collapse of television in Britain’http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-cultural-collapse-of-television-in-britain/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-cultural-collapse-of-television-in-britain/#commentsMon, 20 Jul 2009 16:08:18 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=71493Former Late Show co-host Sarah Dunant considers her former colleague and what they might do next.“It doesn’t surprise me at all to find Michael now involved in politics. He …

]]>Former Late Show co-host Sarah Dunant considers her former colleague and what they might do next.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all to find Michael now involved in politics. He is a substantial man, a man of sublime intelligence and taste,” says Dunant, 59. “But I’m sure that Michael has found that the journey from being one thing to another takes time. It’s a bit like turning around an oil tanker. In my case, it has taken 10 years to change the perception from `Sarah is a television host who sometimes writes novels’ to `Sarah is a novelist who in the past did some television.’

… “The Late Show was an extraordinary show, which you would not now see on British television, such has been the cultural collapse of television in Britain,” she says. “Now the only show that would want Michael or I back is Celebrity Big Brother and I’m not sure that he nor I would wish to be in that house.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-cultural-collapse-of-television-in-britain/feed/4‘I’m not sure how much people know about what he’s gone on to do’http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/im-not-sure-how-much-people-know-about-what-hes-gone-on-to-do/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/im-not-sure-how-much-people-know-about-what-hes-gone-on-to-do/#commentsSat, 11 Jul 2009 13:21:48 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=70319Elizabeth Renzetti sketches Michael Ignatieff’s return to England this week.Not many of Mr. Ignatieff’s former London associates would have pictured him on a podium, engaged in partisan debate. “I …

Not many of Mr. Ignatieff’s former London associates would have pictured him on a podium, engaged in partisan debate. “I don’t think anyone foresaw him strutting across the stage of international politics,” said Mr. Loader, who was one of the creators, 20 years ago, of the BBC’s live culture program The Late Show . He hired Mr. Ignatieff as one of the four hosts, and the former academic quickly “became the good-looking intellectual one. He was quite well-known, he had a reputation as something of a cultural polymath.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/im-not-sure-how-much-people-know-about-what-hes-gone-on-to-do/feed/50‘A pile of fruit and lots of coffee. Now.’http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/a-pile-of-fruit-and-lots-of-coffee-now/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/a-pile-of-fruit-and-lots-of-coffee-now/#commentsTue, 02 Jun 2009 17:32:29 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=61489After endorsements from both my editor in Toronto and Wells, I finally got around to watching The Thick of It, BBC’s political satire of four years ago (and now a…

]]>After endorsements from both my editor in Toronto and Wells, I finally got around to watching The Thick of It, BBC’s political satire of four years ago (and now a major motion picture).

The first episode involves a cabinet minister being fired and his successor coming up with a new policy all on his own. Canadian viewers may find both such occurrences off-putting, but apparently things like this really do happen in other Western democracies.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/a-pile-of-fruit-and-lots-of-coffee-now/feed/5Tamil questions that can’t be askedhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/tamil-questions-that-cant-be-asked/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/tamil-questions-that-cant-be-asked/#commentsThu, 28 May 2009 14:20:00 +0000http://tearsheet.ca/dev/?p=3668That’s because professional ethnic grievance mongers cry 'Racist!' at the drop of a turban

]]>The other day, one of the least soft-headed of Canadian columnists, Lorrie Goldstein, wrote a piece in the Toronto Sun called “Protest backlash unearths racism”:

“Let’s not pretend that much of the condemnation of Tamils in Canada for protesting the plight of Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka isn’t racist.

“Any journalist who’s been around knows what’s going on and we have an obligation to speak up.”

I’ve been around. Well, okay, I’ve been nearby, as Mary Tyler Moore liked to say. And, insofar as I feel an obligation to speak up, it’s only to wonder at how far even the remarkably tensile concept of “racism” can be stretched.

First, let us note that his headline is hooey: there is no “protest backlash.” The protesting Tamils shut down a Toronto city block near the U.S. consulate for days, openly supported a terrorist organization banned in Canada, stormed the Gardiner Expressway and brought traffic to a standstill, and may or may not have been responsible for the burning of a Buddhist temple attended by many Sri Lankan Sinhalese. The “backlash,” by contrast, is little more than some irate calls to talk radio by non-Tamil commuters, plus one fellow who flew a plane over Queen’s Park with a banner saying “Protect Canada. Stop the Tamil Tigers.” (Despite reports to the contrary, he’s apparently not being investigated for perpetrating a “hate crime.” So far.) Nevertheless, while failing to supply a single example thereof, Mr. Goldstein objects to “the ranting of many ‘Canadians’ ” on this issue—“Canadians” in scare quotes, presumably, because no real Canadian would be so nakedly Tamilphobic.

What position should the average racist Canadian—or “Canadian,” as Mr. Goldstein would say—take on this subject? An old-school racist (clinging to the purist position usefully distilled in the old English expression “Wogs start at Calais”) might take the view that he couldn’t care less if one bunch of crazy natives sticks it to another bunch of crazy natives on some rinky-dink island in the Indian Ocean. As the then-U.S. secretary of state James Baker famously observed of the disintegrating Yugoslavia, “We don’t have a dog in this fight.”

But, on the other hand, an impeccable multiculturalist might take that position also. For, between the Tamils and the Sinhalese, who are we to judge? Lorrie Goldstein complains that, pre-Gardiner lockdown, Canadians failed to give credit to the Tamil community for its months of peaceful protest. But the peaceful protests had had all the impact they were ever likely to have: right up until the moment when the Sri Lankan army stormed the Tamil Tigers’ last redoubt and killed its leaders, the United States was calling for a ceasefire and the poseurs of the European Union were demanding “war crimes” investigations into each side. Amidst the celebrations that swept Colombo on news of the Tigers’ final liquidation, Sri Lankans nevertheless found time to swarm the British High Commission and burn an effigy of the foreign and commonwealth secretary, David Miliband—a degree of geopolitical celebrity he’s unlikely ever to enjoy again. What sort of deranged mob would take the trouble to construct an effigy of an entirely obscure London cabinet minister? Well, if Mr. Goldstein feels Canadians are Tamilphobic, many Sinhalese feel that Western opinion is profoundly Sinhalphobic.

Hey, but who cares? What happens in Lanka stays in Lanka, right? Er, no. “In the last few days,” complained Haroon Siddiqui in the Toronto Star, “we’ve heard, over and over again, an old Canadian myth: let the immigrants not import their old country troubles to Canada. Except that they always have: the British and the French, to start with . . .”

I suppose it’s possible to type that line with a straight face, if you sincerely think of the British and French as “immigrants” rather than settlers—or, if you prefer, conquerors—building a new land in their own image. But I’m inclined to agree with Mr. Siddiqui’s larger point that the oft-retailed leave-it-in-the-old-country argument is unpersuasive. It’s a feint, a proxy for what a lot of people really feel but can’t quite articulate lest Lorrie Goldstein call them racist.

Like the revelation during the 2006 war with Israel that half the population of Lebanon hold Canadian passports, the Tamil protests were one of those rare moments when the veil lifts and Canadians glimpse the sheer scale of societal transformation. The obvious question prompted by the size of demonstrations in Ottawa and Toronto is: how did Canada acquire that many Tamils? News reports suggesting that Toronto is home to “200,000 Tamils” prompted a lot of pooh-poohing about inflated figures and unreliable statistics. And surely they are. I doubt there are verifiable numbers on the Tamil population of Ontario. But, even if they’re half that 200,000, it would seem to be more Tamils than anyone might reasonably need—or indeed, even if you did need them, more than you could reasonably expect to acquire. A six-figure population of Germans, Russians, Chinese, Indonesians, sure. But Tamils are a small minority (15 per cent or so) of the population of a small island of 20 million people on the other side of the world. Yet Canada has somehow managed to preside over a bigger population transfer than the British did when they ran both Sri Lanka and India and imported a massive Tamil population from the mainland to work on tea plantations. The largest Tamil city in Sri Lanka is Jaffna, population 85,000. Is Toronto now the largest Tamil city in the world? And, if so, why?

Whoops, sorry. That’s racist. What I meant to say was: and, if so, now that the Tamil dream has been crushed in Sri Lanka, wouldn’t the simplest solution be to carve a Tamil homeland out of the GTA? After all, most of the people who want one are already here, and, as long as they entrust traffic control on the Gardiner and QEW to UN peacekeepers, they generally get along with their neighbours in the Great White North better than they do in the Indian Ocean.

The word “immigration,” itself all but verboten in polite society, hardly begins to cover this phenomenon. As for Canadians—or “Canadians”—many would value a language in which they could debate this topic without being damned as “racist” by Lorrie Goldstein. “Any journalist who’s been around” ought to stand against the shrivelling of public discourse in Canada rather than join the massed ranks of professional ethnic grievance mongers crying “Racist!” at the drop of a turban.

“Racism still with us,” read the headline on a Toronto Star editorial the other day. No doubt. I fell asleep halfway through the ensuing mush, but not before noting that it didn’t entirely bear out that headline:

“Second and third generation immigrants, identifiable by race, felt less attached to Canada than their parents.”

So a third generation immigrant’s “attachment to Canada” is ipso facto the result of Gordy McHoser’s ingrained white racism? As opposed to, say, a vague suspicion that a country so willing to blame itself must perforce be generally sucky and lame and unworthy of his allegiance? Who knows? The Toronto Star says “we need to work harder,” redouble our efforts, throw more money at the usual ethnic ward-heelers. And no doubt 20 years down the road they’ll be reporting that fourth and fifth generation immigrants feel even less attached than the second and third generation, and we need to re-treble our efforts.

Last year, the BBC made a documentary about “class.” And at one point they wound up in a council flat filming two young ladies who claimed to be “middle class” on the grounds that they certainly didn’t qualify as “working class,” having no desire to work at all. The interviewer asked who they’d be voting for:

“What? In that Parliament stuff?” said the first girl (white). “I don’t know . . . Wait, there’s one of them, yeah, I can’t remember what ’e’s called but there’s a reason my dad votes for them. The BNPs, or something.” That would be the British National Party.

Affectionately brushing the first girl’s hair, the second girl—her best friend (black)—started laughing: “They’re racist to me, you stupid bitch.”

“I ain’t racist,” giggled the white girl.

“They’d get all the blacks out of the country,” her black bosom buddy explained, still chuckling and brushing her pal’s hair. “And I’m ’alf black, you stupid slut.”

“Oh,” said the white girl. “I thought they’d just chuck all the Pakis out . . .”

“Naah, I’d be chucked out wiv them,” said the black girl. “I’d be rowing me boat back to Jamaica.”

On balance, I’d rather a multiculti society talked about race with that kind of robust insouciance than with the plonkingly platitudinous nancy-boy earnestness of the PC enforcers. As the Liberal party attack poodle Warren Kinsella recently discovered, after some ill-advised remarks about eating barbecued cat at his favourite Chinese restaurant, tiptoeing on eggshells is impossible—even for the big-time “anti-racists” who helped build the course.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/tamil-questions-that-cant-be-asked/feed/175Don’t make Iggy angryhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/dont-make-iggy-angry/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/dont-make-iggy-angry/#commentsMon, 25 May 2009 04:48:14 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=59419You wouldn’t like Iggy when he’s angry. Just ask Peter. Very briefly at the 1:48 mark (Peter reappears again for a second or two at 1:52).

]]>A very rough—and not entirely chronological—sketch of Michael Ignatieff’s time abroad.

After graduating from the University of Toronto, Ignatieff pursued further studies at Oxford and Harvard. He returns to teach for two years at the University of British Columbia, then spends six years at Cambridge. He later teaches at Oxford, the University of London, the London School of Economics, the University of California and l’École des Hautes Études in Paris. He later works as a television host for the BBC and a columnist for The Observer.

He writes 16 books, including a biography of Isaiah Berlin, a study of prisons during the industrial revolution, a consideration of political philosophy and humanity, and a history of his father’s family. In a series of books—Blood and Belonging, Warrior’s Honour, Virtual War and Empire Lite—he studies issues of nationalism, military intervention and nation-building. In the process he travels to various countries and war zones. He co-writes an essay and co-edits a collection of essays with Hungarian economist Istvan Hont. He writes three works of fiction, two books on human rights and one—The Lesser Evil—about how the Western world can and should confront international terrorism.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/remember-the-80s/feed/28Speaking Of Dickens…http://www.macleans.ca/authors/jaime-weinman/speaking-of-dickens/
http://www.macleans.ca/authors/jaime-weinman/speaking-of-dickens/#commentsFri, 27 Feb 2009 22:16:39 +0000http://blog.macleans.ca/?p=39713PBS has picked up the North American rights to last year’s BBC miniseries based on Little Dorrit, written by their resident miniseries guy Andrew Davies. The first episode will…

The miniseries didn’t get very good ratings (nothing compared to the response to Davies’ Bleak House miniseries that made him the BBC’s star adaptor), even though it was hyped as being particularly relevant to the times: the theme of the novel is money and its corrupting influence on human relationships; there’s a very Bernie Madoff-ish character in the story, and it’s the book where Dickens introduced the idea that the government has a “Circumlocution Office” devoted to making sure that nothing ever gets done, by tying up every new idea or invention in endless red tape.

But while Little Dorrit may be my favourite Dickens, it’s a very hard book to adapt; the 1988 two-part movie version has fans, but I’m not one of them. It has at least two big problems for adaptors. One is that it doesn’t have as many colourful characters and events as Dickens’ other books; it may actually be his best-written book, but it doesn’t have any characters who have become cultural icons, and it doesn’t have as many violent and spectacular events that made Bleak House such a perfect candidate for Davies’ soap-opera approach. The lack of colourful characters may be part of what hurt it in the ratings; most of the time is taken up with the hero, a man approaching middle age and trying all sorts of failed schemes to give direction to his rudderless life, and the heroine, a tiny, mousy young woman who has great strength of character but a no strength of personality.

The other problem is that even though it has Dickens’ usual complicated, coincidence-heavy plot with melodramatic contrivances that are set up at the beginning and revealed at near the end, the story is split into two separate parts, one when the title character lives in debtors’ prison with her father (“Poverty”), the other when a long-lost plot contrivance has made her family rich but even more dysfunctional (“Wealth”). The break between the two parts is very awkward, yet neither part works as a separate story on its own. So it’s hard for an adaptor to whittle the story down to a manageable size, whereas with Dickens’ other novels it’s at least possible.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/authors/jaime-weinman/speaking-of-dickens/feed/1See no evilhttp://www.macleans.ca/authors/michael-petrou/see-no-evil/
http://www.macleans.ca/authors/michael-petrou/see-no-evil/#commentsThu, 22 Jan 2009 21:39:11 +0000http://blog.macleans.ca/?p=30420What Iran's recent hostility to the BBC says about the state of the regime

]]>The soft drink can looked as if it should contain Coke. It had the familiar red background and white script. But this was in Esfahan, the most elegant and beautiful city in Iran, but still part of a country where the ruling clerics periodically tie themselves in knots about Coca-Cola’s supposed connections to the governments of Israel and America. So instead of Coke, we were drinking Mecca-Cola, whose founder, a French Muslim entrepreneur named Tawfiq Mathlouthi, launched the brand with the claim that it would contribute to the “fight against American imperialism and the fascism of the Zionist entity.” A small message on the can asks that drinkers avoid mixing the drink with alcohol.

My host—I’ll call him Farouk—was a white-haired septuagenarian with a sad and gentle face. He had previously been jailed because of his secular and leftist beliefs and had written several books of poetry and philosophy, all of which sat unpublished on his apartment shelves. Farouk poured some Mecca-Cola into my glass and then added the contents of a bottle of strong alcohol that had been smuggled into Iran from Turkey or Iraqi Kurdistan. He turned on his illegal satellite television and flipped through the channels until he found one showing pornography. He sighed, sank into his chair, and raised a glass to his lips.

I don’t think Farouk cared one way or the other about the mechanically coupling bodies on screen. I think he simply wanted to demonstrate his total disdain for the Muslim theocracy that had been running his country for the last three decades, and getting drunk while watching porn was a neat and tidy way of accomplishing this.

“I am 71 years old,” Farouk said. “And all my life I have been lucky to continue learning as if I were a young man. If you don’t learn, if you don’t continue to learn, you are frozen. The mullahs in Iran are frozen. They are trapped 1,400 years ago.”

This drinking session took place more than four years ago, the last time I was in Iran. But I was reminded of Farouk and his illegal satellite television this week because BBC World Service has launched a Farsi language television channel aimed at viewers in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. Iranian officials have promptly called the channel a “security threat” and have vowed to take the “necessary measures.” They have already refused the BBC permission to do any production work for the new TV channel on Iranian soil and have warned its citizens to have nothing to do with it. It’s unlikely these measures will have much effect. BBC World Service already broadcasts in Farsi and has a weekly audience of 10 million listeners. Millions of Iranians have satellite dishes.

But the reaction of the Iranian government reveals just how little faith it has in its own popular legitimacy. I worked for BBC World Service when I was living in England a few years back. Its headquarters, in a place called Bush House a short walk from Trafalgar Square, is a wonderful mix of British and world cultures. Bush House is an old and stately building fronted by pillars with the words “Dedicated to the friendship of English-speaking peoples” engraved above them. The tea trolley makes its regular rounds, and most everyone can speak intelligently about cricket. Yet the BBC World Service is also the most multi-ethnic and multilingual news organization I’ve ever worked for. A typical shift in the newsroom might find a young Afghan man on leave from the BBC’s Kabul bureau on your left, and a much older Hungarian who fled communism decades ago and never left London on your right. I never worked on a story about a country where the BBC didn’t have good contacts on the ground. And this was just the English language service. BBC World broadcasts in several dozen languages. Their goal, simple and unabashed, is to be the best—the most trusted and comprehensive—news organization in the world. Most days I think they pull it off, which is why I’ve met people all over the world—from tribesman with henna-died beards on the Afghan-Pakistan border, to taxi drivers in Syria—who tune in.

Iran’s theocracy has proved itself to be remarkably resilient. I have wrongly predicted its imminent demise before and won’t repeat the same mistake here. Nevertheless, when a government doesn’t trust its own people to watch what they want, especially when what they want to watch is the BBC, the rot is well set in.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/authors/michael-petrou/see-no-evil/feed/2The International Olympic Committee: Recession Proofhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/the-international-olympic-committee-recession-proof/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/the-international-olympic-committee-recession-proof/#respondTue, 02 Dec 2008 23:17:38 +0000http://macleans.wordpress.com/?p=21605From now on, we’ll be rationing tissues… Jacques Rogge, the head of the IOC recently warned member nations that the Olympic movement will have to tighten its belt, given the…

]]>From now on, we’ll be rationing tissues… Jacques Rogge, the head of the IOC recently warned member nations that the Olympic movement will have to tighten its belt, given the steadily worsening global economy. John Furlong, the CEO of Vancouver 2010, has sounded similarly gloomy warnings, suggesting that Vanoc may have to look for budget reductions. But somewhere in the Olympic world, the sun still shines.

Today, the European Broadcasting Union, a consortium of 75 public broadcasters in 56 countries, announced that its bid to carry Sochi 2014 and the 2016 Summer Games has been turned down by the IOC. The EBU stations, which claim to reach a combined 650 million people a week, have broadcast every Olympics since 1956. The nub of the dispute is—as always—money. Coming off the ratings bonanza of Beijing, the IOC is seeking top dollar for competitions that are barely on the horizon ( a host city for 2016 won’t even be selected until next year.) “EBU Members were surprised by the high financial expectations of the IOC,” said the organization’s current president Fritz Pleitgen of the German broadcaster ARD.

Jean-Paul Philippot of Belgium’s RTBF was even blunter. “The worldwide financial crisis will not stop at the doorstep of free-to-air television; it will also have an impact on the value of broadcast rights for sports events. The EBU’s offer reflected the maximum price public service broadcasters could pay for the rights, our philosophy of investing in Olympic sports throughout the Olympiad (the four years between the summer Games), and the value of offering Olympic sports free of charge to all citizens”.

“We are sorry that we did not manage to convince the IOC of the importance of our global support of Olympic sport,” he said

The EBU, which includes heavy hitters like the BBC and Italy’s RAI network, hasn’t said just how much it bid for 2014 and 2016, but the consortium paid US $443.4 million for Beijing, and in 2004, paid $746 million for the rights to Vancouver 2010 and the London Summer Games two years later.

The IOC apparently feels that it can squeeze more money out of broadcasters by putting the rights up for auction all over Europe. We’ll see.